


Alternate Ending to The Changeling

by Annerb



Series: Bonus Materials for The Changeling and Armistice Series [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Ending, F/M, Slytherin!Ginny, Tragedy, ginny weasley is a badass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22036867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annerb/pseuds/Annerb
Summary: Someone asked me: "What would have happened if harry had died in the forest or on the run or elsewhere in your changeling/armistice series?" This was my incoherent response turned ficlet.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Series: Bonus Materials for The Changeling and Armistice Series [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586182
Comments: 34
Kudos: 378





	Alternate Ending to The Changeling

OH NO YOU DIDN’T.

Yes. You did. Okay. There are two ways this goes. One that is tragic and one that is wildly tragic. Today I shall indulge you with the merely tragic version. (Because how can it not be?)

So. Harry dies in the forest and doesn’t come back. The only way that really works is if Voldemort doesn’t use Harry’s blood for the resurrection ceremony for some reason. So he doesn’t have Lily’s protection. He goes out into the forest and dies so that the horcrux will die as well.

There is no coming back.

Everything after that goes nearly the same.

Neville refuses to be cowed. Voldemort puts the Sorting Hat on him. Neville pulls the sword and kills Nagini—the last horcrux. Everything shoves back into motion.

Only there is no Harry under an invisibility cloak. Hagrid hunches over his lifeless body, trying to protect him from the barrage of spells and debris even if there is no longer any point.

Ginny floats along in a horrific sort of icy clarity, fighting with Luna and Hannah, refusing to think of the body still spilled out on the stones. _You knew this would happen, you knew what he was doing._ She gets pushed back into the Great Hall. She nearly gets killed by Bellatrix’s spell. Molly still steps forward and kills Bellatrix.

This is where everything changes. 

Voldemort, enraged by the way his spells aren’t working—he may be master of the Elder Wand free and clear in the timeline, he may have defeated Harry, but Harry still died to protect the people in this castle and Voldemort’s spells just don’t work the way they should. He watches his greatest ally and sycophantic follower fall to a frumpy blood traitor and is filled with unparalleled rage—he killed the boy, this should be all done, why is there still fighting?

He sends a nasty, inescapable curse towards Molly Weasley, hitting her square in the chest.

She goes down. Goes down and doesn’t move.

Ginny sees all of this. Sees it and feels it and is still living in a sort of icy clarity that makes everything possible. Her mother falls and she thinks for the second time— _I will end him, even if it is the last thing I ever do_.

Ginny has become many things for the war, been many people, and in that moment as a sister to a dead brother and a could-have-been maybe girlfriend to a dead boy on the stones and daughter to a mother fallen in defense of her—Ginny snaps and becomes something else.

She yells his name—his _real_ name, his Muggle name—like a curse and steps forward, wand raised, screaming, “Avada—” It’s more than enough, she truly means it, has more than enough hate to make it count and absolutely no compunction about it, but Tom gets there first, his powerful wand slashing and disarming her.

Her wand lands at his feet and he snaps it in half with his heel, the sound loud in the terrible hush that seems to fall over the hall. Tom lets out a roar of sound, her body lifting with his rage and his power and flying across the room into his outstretched hand.

Ginny finds herself held by the throat, feet dangling, air stolen. She stares into his face and realizes this is how it ends. For all he has changed, she can still see Tom in that grotesque face, the boy hiding under everything.

“You stupid, silly girl,” he snarls. “Did you really think you could harm _me_?”

She didn’t think anything, truth be told, but here she is, staring into his face, everything slowing down. She doesn’t see him anymore, but her brother, lying still. Her mother, falling. Harry, tumbling to the stones.

_I wish,_ had been his last words to her, this boy she maybe could have loved, had she ever been given the chance.

Time seems to stretch infinitely long as Tom decides how to kill her, but all she hears are the words _stupid, silly girl_ echoing over and over again _,_ and she thinks, _you really never knew me at all_. Because he has taken so much from her, too much, and she will not give him a single thing more.

_Could you kill, if you had to?_ she hears Harry’s voice asking, his face contorted with sadness and fear of a destiny he never asked for but faced until the very end.

Harry isn’t a killer. _Wasn’t_ a killer.

But she could be. She _will be_. 

Tom thinks she’s helpless. He think she has no wand and so can’t be a threat to him.

She isn’t weak.

With her last strength, she wraps her hand around his wrist, the skin cool and clammy under hers, as if he is already dead, has been dead forever but it just hasn’t stuck.

She’ll make it stick.

Ginny starts to gather energy in her hand. Her small, helpless hand.

_Careful,_ Nymue’s voice cautions, _never give too much of yourself._

Ginny will give absolutely everything she is.

It builds and builds. Not fear or sadness or rage, but pure magic, her soul, her essence. She lets it build and build, the air seeming to crackle with it. 

With one last breath, she shoves it all out of her skin and into his. 

There’s a scream of rage and pain, Ginny’s feet hitting the ground with an unpleasant lurch, but she holds tight, nails digging in until there is blood, pouring her magic into Tom, letting it ravage through him indiscriminately. 

There are other screams, spells impacting near her, but she ignores them. Ignores everything but Tom and the magic she is not afraid of. Stretching out her other hand, she digs her nails into his face, pressing out yet more magic, no need for wands or spells, just her bones and her flesh and her determination. A woman’s magic, toppling a man who never even thought to fear it. Never even deigned to know it existed, for all it nearly killed him once before. He buckles in front of her, his face confused and childlike as she burns him from the inside out.

He’s still hanging on, just barely, and so is she. Maybe there’s no more room left for either of them. Maybe they’ve always been the same person since she let him twine himself into her soul at the age of eleven.

“Goodbye, Tom,” she says, and lets go of the last sliver of herself she has left.

They both hit the stones and lie silent.

* * *

Ginny wakes slowly, the light above her blindingly bright as it filters down through the trees. She can feel grass under her legs, the brush of wind across her skin.

She is filled with a buoyant sense of everything being okay. 

Turning her head, she can see that she is in the orchard, the Burrow hazy in the distance, bleached nearly white by the intense summer sun.

“Here she is,” a familiar voice says. “The Dark Lord slayer.”

“Fred?” she asks, looking up.

He smiles, crouching down next to her, looking whole and warm and _alive_. “I always knew you were fierce, little sis. But that was something else.”

He helps her sit up, one hand slung across her shoulders, and she leans into him, hugging him tight. “I thought you were…”

“I am,” he says.

The truth of it hits her low in the stomach, like a breath that can’t be caught.

Peering over his shoulder, Ginny can make out Remus and Tonks sitting together at the base of nearby tree. They wave at her. A few feet beyond, Caroline stands, barely visible in the shadows, Colin Creevey nearby with Lavender.

There are more, mere shades in the distance. 

The dead.

_I’m dead too_ , she realizes.

“Is Mum here?” she asks Fred.

He shakes his head. “No. She’s made of firmer stuff than blowy old Moldyworts.”

Ginny closes her eyes, relieved. So relieved.

“He’s waiting for you.”

She frowns, wanting to ask who, but when she turns and looks, there’s the dock stretching out into the pond. A boy with wild black hair sits at the very end, bare feet swinging above the sparkling water like a child.

She looks up at Fred, her heart pounding away in her chest.

She expects teasing, but he just gives her a little nudge. “Go on.”

Getting to her feet, she walks slowly down the lawn, the grass cool between her toes.

The wood planks creak quietly under her weight, the water lapping against the shore. Lowering herself, she sits next to Harry, letting her toe dip into the water.

“Is he really gone?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says. “He’s really gone.”

She nods, looking back out over the water, the way it sparkles with light. “I killed him.”

“You did.”

It’s so peaceful here. But there is also something hard building in her chest. “You wouldn’t have done that.”

He shakes his head. “You don’t know that. That was a choice I never had to make.”

But he’s looking at her like he always has, nothing changed there.

“You saved a lot of people’s lives, Ginny.”

“Not yours.”

He smiles, something soft and regretful. “This is how it had to be,” he says. “You’ll have to ask Ron and Hermione to explain it to you sometime.”

She looks around, alarm jolting in her stomach. “Are they here?”

He shakes his head. “No. No. I mean when you go back.”

“Go back?”

“Of course,” he says. “It isn’t really your time.”

Because maybe that is it, the hardness in her chest, the tiny tether to the world they’ve all left behind. “And if I want to stay?”

Harry doesn’t answer, just looks back at her, his smile softening, as if he knows her better than she knows herself. 

There are people who need her. There are things she hasn’t finished. But it is so nice here. She closes her eyes.

Back there, people call her so many things. Heir of Slytherin. Mistress. Monster. Captain. Leader. Sister. Terror.

And now there will be one more.

“I’m a killer,” she says.

He reaches out, fingers brushing hers. “You’re _Ginny_ ,” he says. “That’s the only one you need to hold on to. It’s the only one that matters.”

She opens her eyes, looking at his face, the way all the dirt and wounds and weight are no longer there. Even the scar, his famous scar, seems gone. She reaches out to touch his forehead and he doesn’t flinch away from these hands that have killed, that have used magics some would claim she has no right to.

He is warm and solid, the feel of it washing away the memory of Voldemort’s skin.

“I wish,” she says. Not a hesitation or a beginning. A full statement.

He nods, fingers on her chin, and then he’s kissing her. There seems to be a lifetime of memories and possibilities in that kiss, flashing by so quickly she can’t absorb them. But maybe they’re real. Maybe that kiss does last lifetimes. Maybe there are other ways this all happened.

Harry rests his forehead against hers. “I can’t wait to see all the amazing things you’re going to do, Ginny.” 

The calm of this place seems to be dissipating, tears prickling her eyes.

Her fingers tighten on his arms. “Will I see you again?”

“Of course,” he says. “But not for a long while, I hope.”

It’s time, she knows. Time for her to go back. He doesn’t even have to say anything.

Pulling away, he gets to his feet, reaching to help her up.

They walk down the dock hand in hand.

“Could you tell Ron and Hermione…tell them how nice it is here. Tell them that I’m okay. That there was nothing they could have done differently. They were…they were the best things in my life.”

She nods, the emotions coming back now, seeming to overwhelm her. “I will. I promise.”

Fred hugs her. “Tell George that I know he’s doing the best he can.”

She nods, trying to hold on to her brother and the warm hand in hers.

They begin to fade, to slip away from her.

She looks at Harry, panic swelling in her chest. “What do I do?”

“Just wake up, Gin,” he says. “Just wake up.” 

The bright light slowly fades, leaving behind pale green walls and a horrible ache deep in her bones. It all settles on her again, the weight of her flesh and the world and even the air hard and harsh against her skin.

There are cards on the walls. Many, many cards. Most covered in crude writing and crayons. And even, for some reason, a toilet seat.

One has a drawing of a girl with flaming hair and lightening flowing from her fingers.

_She Who Saved Us All_.

Sounds settle in next, and there’s a voice nearby, someone reading words. Words that are familiar.

“You know I loathe Hemingway,” she rasps, voice weak and unused.

In his chair next to her bed, Tobias’s head lifts with a jerk, his eyes widening almost comically. “Yes, well,” he says, clearly trying to recover, “I figured if anything could wake you from a three-month coma, it would be pure spite.”

She closes her eyes. Three months. She would have guessed lifetimes. “Well played.”

“You’re not dead.”

“No,” she says, the feeling of that other place fading slowly. She tries to hold on, tries to remember every nuance.

His hand touches her arm, and it hurts, hurts so bad and feels so real and makes her want to weep and shout. “Thank you for not being dead,” he says.

She forces her eyes back open. “Is it all over?”

He nods. “Yes. It’s all over.”

“Good.” She doesn’t need the details right now.

“I need to send for your parents. They’ll want to…”

She nods, knowing what has to come next.

People begin to arrive, so many people and voices and noises, but she still feels in a bit of a fog. There will be time later to talk to George, to Ron and Hermione. To learn all she needs to. To keep her promises.

The mediwitches and healers are wary. She isn’t so blind not to see it.

They all whisper behind their hands.

“How are you?” the healer asks.

“Still thirsty,” she says, her earlier request having been ignored.

Her mother moves to get the glass for her, but the Healer lifts a hand to stop her. “We just need to ask a few questions first.”

“Such as?” Ginny asks, noticing that there are Aurors in the hall.

_Killer._

“How are you feeling?” the healer asks again.

She ignores him, looking at the glass on the table across the room. Lifting her hand, ready to demonstrate just how she is. She has nothing left to hide behind anymore.

The glass flies into her hand. 

The mediwitch takes a startled step back, something like fear in her eyes.

Ginny takes a deep drink of water, her deep thirst finally dissipating.

“Now, I feel fine,” she says. “Anymore questions?”

Nothing is ever going to be the same again. 

But that’s okay. She’s Ginny. She’ll see them all again.

But for now, she is going to do amazing things. 

.fin.


End file.
